There they go again. The air has just cleared, people have just calmed down after the last wave of terrorist bombings, and Israel`s left-wing lemmings are driving toward the precipice again.

After meeting with Yasir Arafat at his Ramallah compound to show solidarity and act as "human shields" to protect him from any Israeli action, Israel's far-out leftists have begun what they call a "street campaign," which they hope will gather strength in the coming months.

Peace Now recently brought a few thousand protestors to Tel Aviv's Rabin Square to demand the uprooting of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria and an end to the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The Peace Now demonstrators also denounced the Sharon government`s policy of "targeted killings" on the grounds that the policy helps perpetuate an endless cycle of violence.

Since all blood is red, perhaps Israel`s lemmings can`t tell the difference between the blood of innocent Israelis cut down while innocently going about their lives and the blood of psychopathic murderers whom Israel liquidates before they can kill again.

Returning to the darkest days of the Left`s slander campaign — initiated by Yitzhak Rabin himself — against the Land of Israel nationalist camp, former Labor MK Yael Dayan has revived the theme of "settlements vs. the poor," emphasizing the cost of the settlements and complaining that the government was still pumping huge amounts of money into them while other Israelis were going hungry.

Why didn`t she suggest cutting government monies spent on museums, theaters, concert halls, dance companies and other secular cultural institutions that the elites of the Left benefit from in disproportionate numbers?

Has Dayan ever suggested that the Kibbutz movement repay the tens of billions of shekels the government has laid out over the years to cover the deep debts run up by the kibbutzim? Most of that debt was incurred in order to maintain the comfortable standard of living — above the Israeli average — enjoyed by kibbutzniks even after their experiment in collectivism proved to be a grand economic failure. Where`s the Left`s outrage about that, while other Israelis were going hungry?

The demagogic talk reminds me of the Left's last big hysterical campaign against settlements, which occurred just about a year ago. At that time, Meretz MK Yossi Sarid said that "All of the settlements were created by law breaking and violence and I hope the spread of this cancer will end quickly. The outposts are worse than suicide bomb belts."

That sober assessment was matched for sheer wisdom by then Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg (Labor), who called the people at the Gilad Farm in Samaria "Jewish Hamas."

Proving that the Left's disparagement of Jewish nationalism and defense of Israel's enemies never abates, Labor Party leader Shimon Peres just last week gave the following glowing assessment of Yasir Arafat: "I believe it was right to give [Arafat] the Nobel Peace Prize because he did three things that no other Palestinian leader did. He declared publicly that he recognized the State of Israel, no other Palestinian leader dared do that so publicly. Second, he said he would abandon terrorism, and third he agreed that peace would be based on the borders of 1967 and not 1948."

Peres did acknowledge that Arafat made a mistake by failing to dismantle terrorist groups opposed to peace with the Jewish state. "He spoke against [them], but did not act against them," Peres said, almost wistfully.

All in all, though, it was a near total whitewash by Peres of Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. Peres ignored Arafat`s involvement in illegal arms smuggling, in funding Marwan Barghouti`s Fatah-Tanzim and Al-Aksa Brigades terrorist activities, and in inciting the masses to violence with calls for "Jihad, Jihad, Jihad" (i.e. killing Jews).

If you still need a telltale sign of how sick the Left in Israel has become, consider the following: According to some of the participants in the aforementioned Tel Aviv peace rally, a number of people in the crowd that night actually booed when the Israeli national anthem, "Hatikvah," was played at the close of the demonstration.

Ariel Natan Pasko, an independent analyst and consultant living in Israel, is a frequent contributor to newspapers and political websites.